He was born on March 16, 1927, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but after the disappearance of his father, Moynihan spent years living in poverty as a child in Hell’s Kitchen, New York, where he shined shoes and worked at his mother’s bar. It’s no less controversial in 2023 than it was in 1993, but it is every bit as necessary.ĭaniel Patrick Moynihan served as a Democratic senator from New York between 19. Even at the time of its publication, “Defining Deviancy Down,” like The Negro Family, was a controversial work. In what follows, I present my contribution to the symposium in full, along with summaries of Sally, Kay, and Steven’s presentations and AEI Head of Domestic Policy Matthew Continetti’s opening remarks. The event featured me, Sally Satel, Kay Hymowitz, Steven Teles, and Neil Gross presenting our reflections on the Moynihan’s essay and its continuing relevance for American society in the present day. Last week, I participated in an online symposium convened by the American Enterprise Institute marking the thirtieth anniversary of Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s seminal essay “Defining Deviancy Down.” Though it’s less well-known than Moynihan’s 1965 study, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, “Defining Deviancy Down” shares with that work a prescient understanding of the social consequences of shifting norms and the perverse incentives at work when efforts to destigmatize socially adverse behavior run up against the realities of life in a large, diverse, capitalist democracy.
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